New Member - Old Pentax user

Hi - I am Jon, from Denmark.

Drummer, biker, outdoor-type, do-it-yourself-type, let-the-other-ones-do-it-type - and amateur photographer for more than 35 years.

Started with borrowing my Dads 6x6 Agfa Isolette - and soon after bought my first SLR, the usual Zenith E. After a couple of years spent partly in the cupboard, trying to persuade rollfilm into used Tri-X cartridges, I graduated to a Chinon Memotron with a couple of lenses besides the 55 mm - and made diasshows.

The camera was put away for some years, my girlfriends Olympus Trip35 took over the task of documenting our trips into the wilderness - until we on a trip to Thailand and Malaysia got to Singapore. There, I bought a Pentax K1000 with a 50 mm - I had at the time developed a nostalgic liking for anything altmodisch. Back home in Denmark, over the next couple of years I bought a 28 and a 105 - and a Tamron 350 mirror tele.

This kit served me for the next 15 years or so - until the shutter started to play up on Cuba, ruining quite a few nice slides. You don´t see it before you get home.....


Back home, I decided to go digital - the PC had already taken over as tape recorder for my band. The lenses I had was brillant, so Pentax it had to be. Since 2006, I have been the owner of a *ist dl, and as my pictures are seen on screen only for 99% of the time, that has worked fine. I am so much used to manual handling, and now I have had the possibility to check instantly for lighting or focus problems. Nice.

I still think as if I had film in the camera - so I haven´t yet taken 10.000 pictures with it - the thought of coming home from a weeklong holiday with say 3.000 pictures to look through doesn´t appeal to me, so I tend to only press the button when I feel convinced I have a motive....

But now I feel the urge to get some more pixels - mostly. And, as a bandmate has acquired a Zoom recorder with built-in videocamera, the possibilty to add another angle and mix some videos of our live gigs appeal to me.

So, I had almost convinced myself of the need to get a K30, or wait for a K500 - but eventually ended up buying a second-hand K-5 for less.

I brought it with me on my recent holidays in Provence, and it did great. Especially the low-light performance is way better, but also the viewfinder is a lot better. I have installed an magnifying eyepiece - highly recommended. The whole thing exudes solidity, and the battery has been great.

But it is not the ideal camera for me - that would be a digital version of a K1000, a totally manual FF with modern exposure meter and a large screen at the back. A bit like a Fuji X-100, but a DSLR. Ideal also for thumping those stubborn tent-poles into the hardened ground - if only they wouldn´t break.....that camera will never happen, I know, so now I am very, very happy with the K-5.


Looking forward to hang around here, too - listen and learn.


Regards

Jon

Hi Jon, great to see another member from overseas, welcome to the site. Why not just use the K-5 in fully manual mode - then it will be a fully manual DSLR!!

You always have the luxury of switching back to an auto mode if you wish - so you have the best of both worlds.

Best wishes
David

Thanks!

Are we overseas? I thought they were overseas?



I do use it fully manually - all my lenses are old K and M. I had a kit lens 18-55 - but didn´t use it much, so sold it with the *ist DL in order to shift that. Noone would buy that without a lens....

It takes a little while to get used to the ergonomics of a new camera - the time is now sitting at the front wheel, not so accessible as on the *ist DL where it is at the back wheel, right where my thumb ends. But I guees that is only habits needing to adjust.

Otherwise, I like it.


Jon




Regards

Jon

Why adjust your habits?. You can set the wheels to your liking in the menu.
CHEERS Vic

Hello and Welcome to the Forum!

Thanks! I found it. This camera can really do many, many things....It will take a while before I get to the bottom of every menu!

Jon

Hello and Welcome

As David notes it is nice to see another member not from the UK - there are an increasing number now which is great

I also tend to use manual lenses - started that as an experiment but just love using them

Cheers


Stu

Thanks to you too, Andrew.

We use the term "overseas" too - but that means across one of the oceans, not something as small as the North Sea. Heck, we are seamen by birth, so you are kind of neighbours.

My other interests - drumming and old motorbikes - has led me to international fora, and I invariably find the british fora the friendliest and funniest, generally without the hard tone I often see at the - maybe larger - US based ones.


I hope this forum is no exception to that!




JOn